Last Updated on March 27, 2024 by BVN
S.E. Williams
A 2022 study published by Cambridge University Press told us what Black mothers and fathers already know, and regarding the murder of Ryan Gainer, is once again infuriatingly evident—that police agencies (with supporting narratives of mainstream media) continue to portray our children, our Black boys, as dangerously menacing, hyper-aggressive, oversized adults, who evoke fear in the average human being.
Ryan was only 15 years-old when he was shot and killed by San Bernardino County sheriff‘s deputies outside his parents’ home in Apple Valley on March 9, 2024. Gainer, an autistic, was in the midst of a mental health crisis when his family called for assistance. Sheriff deputies responding to the call observed Ryan with a gardening tool, perceived him as a threat to their safety, opened fire and killed him.
Reports indicate deputies had responded to the home at least five times in recent months and as such, should have been aware of Gainer’s condition. So, why weren’t they prepared to better manage the situation in light of Gainer’s mental health challenges?
The shooting death of a child is traumatizing for family and community and the reality that this child had special needs weighs this trauma with added sadness. This sadness is further exacerbated by comments made by San Bernardino County Sheriff Shannon Dicus in the aftermath of Ryan’s death. Dicus stretched the boundaries of believability in his efforts to justify the deputies killing of 15-year old Ryan.
“Certainly juveniles can be dangerous,” Dicus proclaimed. And then came the predictable and racialized “adultomorphism” (the attribution of adult traits or motives to children) too often used to disparage Black children shot down by law enforcement or overcharged by district attorneys. “He is large of stature,” declared Dicus. “He is physically fit,” he stated as if young Ryan was a gold medalist in Olympic weightlifting.
Dicus made these statements with ease apparently impervious to the impact of adultomorphism on the Black community and its racialized implications. As far as I am concerned it is nothing less than a sanitized version of a racial slur—a typical dog whistle.
Dicus never saw Ryan as a child. This way he didn’t have to consciously deal with the fact that his deputies killed a child. He might as well have called Ryan a “big Black buck” or a “big Black nixxa.” This is because by whatever racist description, the age-old, time-tested vilification, criminalization and dehumanization of Black boys–in this case Ryan–by police, is what matters most to authorities as they prepare to defend their own against accusations of wrongful death, potential criminal charges and a costly lawsuit against the county.
“Across America, we’ve often heard of the ‘Herculean Black man’ and ‘wild savage’ that needs to be put down. We won’t allow Ryan’s name and image to be concocted or depicted in that way.”
DeWitt Lacy
Rather than offering “dog whistle” defenses, Dicus should be answering questions when addressing the public relative to this case as to whether young Ryan’s death was preventable? Whether the deputies’ use of lethal force was necessary, warranted, justified? And if he believes so strongly, that the use of lethal force was their only option, then why the need to disparage a Black child with special needs in the depth of a mental health crisis? Ryan was not an animal, he was not a monster, he was a child.
The Black community has grown weary of the bait and switch. In other words, we are not interested in the San Bernardino County Sheriffs Department making a perpetrator out of the victim. We are not buying the tried and true racialized justification for failed policing. When authorities like Dicus stand before us spewing the language of structural and institutional racism, it does not wash away Ryan’s blood from the hands of the deputies who took his life, any more than Dicus throwing the weight of his bonafides as an elected official in front of the officers to serve as their shield.
Some might wonder how again and again across this country officials still justify the killing of a Black child and still manage to sleep comfortably at night—I think its easy when you objectify Black children . . . when you transform a Black child into an adult with superhuman size and strength . . . when you morph a Black child into a monster, a brute.
Let us compare Ryan’s description with the description and treatment of the 2015 mass murderer of nine Black people at the Mother Emanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston, N.C., 21 year-old Dylan Roof. “He was very quiet, very calm… He didn’t talk . . . He sat down here very quietly. He was not problematic . . . He hadn’t eaten in a couple of days . . . They bought him a hamburger . . . one of the police officers went and picked it up.”
This is an example of the difference in treatment between a 15-year old Black child with a mental disability in the midst of a mental health crisis and a 21-year old racist white man who was on the run after murdering nine innocent Black people. The obvious difference—Ryan was a Black male child while Roof was “free, white and 21,” as the saying goes.
When Black children are seen through the lens of institutional racism it explains why Dicus can so dispassionately explain how the circumstances which led to Ryan’s death did not provide a chance for the officers to use a stun gun or another non lethal option. “The use of a taser in this situation with the amount of time or the use of pepper-spray would not have been something we would have been able to react to quickly enough,” he offered.
Members of Black communities continue to endure various forms of racial injustice, abuse, systemic and institutional racism which includes excess use of force by law enforcement–this is part of the nation’s historical racist continuum. It seems no matter how many laws are passed, protests are waged, uprisings erupt or declarations of racism as a public health crisis are adopted, Black adults, Black youth, Black children will continue to die due to police use of excessive force until the mindset of white supremacy is eradicated from the soul of this nation.
I don’t mean to sound pessimistic and this is just my opinion. But as always, I’m keeping it real.